Verifying your Interpretations

Sometimes the question you ask during a reading is so urgent that you need to know if your interpretations are correct. More often than not, your first impression will be the correct one, but sometimes two possibilities can seem equally likely. Which is your Inner Voice trying to make you see? Trying to clarify the answer by doing another reading can lead to more confusion, since you ask your Inner Voice questions it wasn't ready to answer.

I find that the easiest way to clear up confusion is to draw a single card from the remaining cards in the deck, after thoroughly shuffling it. While shuffling, review one of the possible interpretation; the one you feel is the more appropriate of the two. Ask your Inner Voice if you have heard its whispers correctly.

This will be a Yes or No answer, so decide while you shuffle what certain cards will represent. The most common practice, like with any Yes/No spread, is to say that an upright card means yes and a reversed card mean no. Of course, this means that you have to shuffle the deck so that some cards are reversed, and if you don't like doing this there are other options. One way would be to say that suit cards (Ace through Ten) are Yes, and Major Arcana and court cards are No. As long as you ensure a fairly even split, the end result should be the same.

I once asked my Inner Voice to evaluate my interpretations, and the card I drew was the High Priestess, upright. I was almost blown away by the power of this card, since for me this is the Inner Voice personified. My view of the cards wasn't just in the ballpark; I had hit the nail right on the head! In the future, this assertion was eventually proven to be correct.

(Early in your work, it's important to see which cards have special meaning for you. The High Priestess, for me, represents my Inner Voice. The King of Swords is my significator for the side I show the world, while the King of Wands shows the side I generally keep subdued. Everyone has a card or two that means something to them. Discovering this card can be like discovering a hidden piece of yourself, and it opens another doorway through which the Inner Voice can travel.)

The Confirmation Card (as I call it) can provide you with another insight, in addition to the Yes/No answer. In a sense, the card can tell you, "No, you are wrong. And here's why: If you take all the cards in the spread, and shuffle them into the deck before drawing a Confirmation Card, you might be able to see which card requires more thought, or which card is the key to the entire reading that you haven't hit upon yet.

For example, on one occasion I had done a reading, and had interpreted all of the cards except for one, the Three of Cups reversed. I intended to think about this card sometime in the future, but I asked my Inner Voice whether my interpretation of the other cards was sound. The card I drew, after putting all the cards from the spread back into the deck and shuffling thoroughly, was the Three of Cups Reversed. My Inner Voice was practically screaming at me - this card is the key to the entire situation, don't give up on it now! After perhaps three seconds of thought, an insight came that eventually proved to be the critical factor linking everything else together. I may never have discovered it otherwise.